With numerous wrong-way crashes and fatalities on Connecticut highways, state lawmakers called Wednesday for making it easier to arrest drunken drivers.

The legislature’s transportation committee is debating a bill that calls for reducing the drunken driving arrest threshold to 0.05% blood alcohol content, down from the current .08%.

Thomas B. Chapman of the National Transportation Safety Board testified via Zoom in favor of lowering the limit, a position by the NTSB since 2013. Utah became the first state to do so in 2018 and has seen a drop in fatalities.

Dropping the level, Chapman said, would lower the death rate by an estimated 11%. Like Connecticut, other states that are currently considering .05 are Hawaii, Washington, New York, North Carolina and others.

“We are an outlier,” Chapman said, referring to the United States. “Over 100 countries in the world have .05 or lower … That includes much of Europe, where drinking is part of the culture. What is not part of the culture is drinking and driving. … You are impaired at .05. … There is a demonstrable diminishment in cognitive and physical skills at that level.”

Noting that some drivers would not be deterred and would ignore lower levels, Chapman said, “.05 is not the entire answer on this. It is a piece of the answer.”

Nationally, 13,384 people died in the United States in alcohol-related crashes in 2021, the most recent year where complete numbers are available. That includes 112 alcohol-related deaths in Connecticut.

State transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto, testifying remotely Wednesday from a transportation meeting in Philadelphia, said, “What we have been doing as a state has not been working. … Drunk driving is a reckless choice made by the driver. … Everyone is impaired at .05. I know some people might argue with that … but the science is clear.”

Saying that Connecticut could emulate Utah, Eucalitto said the change to .05 did not decrease tourism or alcohol sales in Utah.

Marijuana impact

While the impact of drunken driving has been well documented for years, state legislators are also questioning the influence of the recent decriminalization of marijuana in Connecticut. Drivers smoking pot become impaired, and police have complained repeatedly that they do not have a simple test for marijuana in the way they can measure blood levels for alcohol.

Marijuana has been involved in some fatal accidents, and both drivers were legally drunk and had traces of marijuana in their blood in the wrong-way crash last year that killed state Rep. Quentin “Q” Williams of Middletown after he left the governor’s inaugural ball in Hartford.

Rep. Thomas O’Dea, a New Canaan Republican, said lawmakers need to focus closely on the impact of cannabis on car crashes.

“That’s the elephant in the room in my opinion,” O’Dea said. “My biggest problem is the marijuana laws in Connecticut.”

State Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, the committee’s ranking Senate Republican, said the combination of marijuana and alcohol can be deadly.

“Impairment of any kind is part of the danger on the roads,” Hwang told Chapman. “If we only handle one part and not address the other, it may be a half-completed task. … If you lack common sense, you’re still going to have violators on the roads.”

Chapman responded that alcohol remains the biggest problem, but there is an “increasing prevalence of other impairing substances” that include marijuana.

“It is a growing problem — one that we are concerned about,” Chapman said. “It’s not as easy to test these other substances.”

He noted that airplane pilots have an even higher standard that keeps the skies safe. He noted that pilots avoid alcohol before flying under the mantra of “eight hours from bottle to throttle.”

State Rep. Devin Carney, an Old Lyme Republican, said, “We talk about Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, but we don’t talk about Big Alcohol.”

In an attempt to reduce crashes, the committee voted last year to lower the blood alcohol level for arrest. The measure passed by 21-15 with Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the bipartisan issue. The bill, however, never passed in the state House of Representatives and Senate before time expired.

The committee’s two Democratic co-chairs, Rep. Roland Lemar of New Haven and Sen. Christine Cohen of Guilford, have pushed strongly for improved safety on both the highways and local roads across the state. They shepherded advancements last year to try to reduce the number of wrong-way crashes by allocating money to install wrong-way detection systems at 120 highway exit ramps that were deemed “high risk” by state transportation officials who studied 700 ramps statewide.

The .05 measure is part of a broader plan to reduce a skyrocketing number of fatalities on Connecticut roads. Legislators were stunned at 366 deaths on the roads in 2022 — about one per day. The statistics show that 2022 was the worst year on Connecticut roads since 1989. While fatalities dipped to 323 last year, the accidents are continuing this year.

If approved, Connecticut would follow Utah as the second state in the nation at .05. The national standard is .08 that states have enacted in order to avoid losing funding for federal highway construction. As a result, Connecticut is currently at the same level as nearby New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Rep. Greg Howard, a Stonington Republican who has worked as a police officer for more than 20 years, said it was a mistake when the legislature approved the recreational marijuana law that says if an officer “smells the odor of marijuana, he can’t search the vehicle.” Republicans were unable to push the recreational marijuana minimum age to 25.

“We can’t discount impairment at all,” Howard said, adding that speed is a key contributor to the increase in fatal crashes. “We are losing innocent lives. … Speed is a major factor. … The biggest issue is speed.”

After the marijuana law was signed, an internal bulletin that was sent to police chiefs, training officers, resident troopers, and others warned officers that “the odor of cannabis” or burnt pot “shall not constitute in part or in whole probable cause or reasonable suspicion and shall not be used as a basis to support any stop or search of a motor vehicle.”

One of the reasons for lack of enforcement, he said, is low morale among police officers in Connecticut, which is part of a national trend. The reduction in traffic stops reached 65% among state police during the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

“We need to get our roadways safer, and we need to do that through enforcement,” Howard told the committee. “This reduction in law enforcement is leading to faster speeds and more bodies. … We have got to reduce the average speed on the roads. … We have to get our troopers back to work. We need to let them know they are supported.”

Wednesday marked the committee’s final public hearing of the 2024 legislative session as nearly 60 people signed up to testify. No decisions were made Wednesday, but all bills are subject to final approval by the full House of Representatives and state Senate before the regular session adjourns on May 8.

Statistics

Besides .05, the committee is working on overall traffic safety, including the deaths of pedestrians and a rash of wrong-way crashes on the highways.

In 2022, the 366 overall deaths were the highest in 33 years. Of those deaths, 80 were under the influence of alcohol or drugs, officials said. Another peak in 2022 was 73 pedestrian fatalities, compared to 55 pedestrians in 2019 and 2021 and 51 last year.

Motorcycle deaths have claimed 68, 66, and 62 lives over the past three years, up sharply from 49 in 2019.

Wrong-way crashes also peaked in 2022 with 13 accidents that led to 23 fatalities, the highest total by far in recent years. Last year, the total dropped back down to 7 fatalities — still above the levels of four each in 2020 and 2021.